How Can I Include Math In My Child's Summer?
Use the activites below to maintain and enhance your child's math skills. Sign your initials by each activity your child finishes or
tries for at least 5 minutes. At the end of the summer send this form to your child's teacher to show your child's work.
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Suggested summer math activities for students entering 1st grade
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Play Write the Next Number with your child. Write a number from 1 to 99 and have your child write and say the number that comes next.
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Play Go Fish with your child. Instructions: Deal 7 cards to each player. Put the leftover cards in a 'pool' in the middle. Players lay sets of
cards with matching numbers in front of them. On every turn, a player may ask one other player for a particular type of card ("Do you have any
8s?"). If they have a matching card they must give it up, otherwise they respond "Go Fish" and the asking player draw a single card from the
pool. If it matches their request, they keep it. When all cards have been placed in sets the player with the most cards wins.
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Have your child use a spinner or dice and dried beans or macaroni pieces for a home-made game. Take turns rolling the dice and counting out
that many objects from the pile. Play until someone reaches 30 (or some other number).
Go on a silly walk with your child. Give commands that include counting small amounts (Example: Take two big steps and three little steps.
Hop five times like a bunny. Take three tip-toe steps then five giant steps.)
Ask your child to find objects around your home, sort them by properties, and count the number in each group (Examples: Sort socks by color
or design. Ask, "How many white socks are there?". Sort coins, blocks, toys, snacks, crayons, food, laundry, dishes, etc.).
Go on a sphere scavenger hunt with your child (sports balls, marbles, globes, bubbles, the moon, the sun, balls of yarn, apples or other fruit,
bushes, dandelions (ready to make a wish), old-fashioned computer mouse ball, etc.).
Have your child describe and compare the temperatures of objects or locations using words like: hot, hotter, hottest; warm, warmer,
warmest; cool, cooler, coolest; and cold, colder, coldest (Example: "Which is warmer, your toast or orange juice?" "Is it cooler in the sun or
the shade?" "What is the coldest object you can find in the home?" (maybe an ice cube) etc.).
Play a counting game with your child with one die/dice and macaroni noodles: If you roll a...1-> put 1 noodle back, 2-> put 2 noodles back, 3->
take 3 noodles, 4-> take 4 noodles, 5-> take 5 noodles, 6-> put all your noodles back. First one to 11 noodles wins! (or play Hi-Ho! Cherry-O).
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Go on a cone scavenger hunt with your child (pencil points, funnels, traffic cones, ice cream cones, mountain, pine tree, megaphone, lamp
shade, etc.).
Go on a cube scavenger hunt with your child (cheese cubes, bouillon cubes, Legos, dice, building blocks, lunch box, footstool, etc.).
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Have your child count small numbers of objects (10 or fewer) then say how many more objects are needed to make ten.
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Play a variant on the card game War with your child (remove face cards first). Each player gets two cards and adds them. The player with the
highest total wins all the cards for that round.
Have your child determine which containers in your home hold the most water. Which hold the least? Which hold the same amount? (pour
water between measuring cups, drinking cups, bowls, buckets, etc.)
Have your child find out: Are there more lamps or windows in your home? More forks or knives? More doors or rooms?
Play Hide and Find . Hide a toy and give clues about its location using position words. Then switch and have your child hide the toy and give
the clues. (Example: "Look under the television," "Look beside the ball," "Look in front of the bookshelf.").
Have your child work on counting from 1 up to 100 while playing hide and seek or a similar game.
Play Make 10 with your child. Deal 12 cards face up from a deck of cards (face cards removed). Players take turns choosing a pair that
makes 10 and replacing it with two new cards, or taking just a 10. Play until no more pairs can be made.
Go on a square scavenger hunt with your child, being sure to distinguish them from rectangles (tiles, card tables, chair seats, pillows, window
panes, chain link fence holes, computer icons, crackers, etc.).
Go on a walk with your child and identify all the shapes they can find (triangles, rectangles, squares, circles, hexagons, cubes, cones,
cylinders, spheres, etc.).
Go on a triangle scavenger hunt with your child (envelope flaps, roofs, diagonally cut sandwiches, slice of pizza, yield signs, cell phone
towers, tortilla chips, folded paper, pennants, etc.).
Ask your child: Who is the tallest in the family? Am I taller than my sibling? Who is the shortest? Is anyone the same height?
Let your child guess how many of their steps it will it take, for example, to get from the tree to the corner, then count steps to see how close
the estimate is. Next let your child guess how many of your steps it will take and count again to see how close they get.
Play or make up a game with your child, using dominoes or homemade domino cards (Each domino has a number 0-6 on one end and a
number 0-6 on the other. The 28 different ways of combining these make a domino set). Example: Shuffle the dominoes face down in the
middle. Each player draws 7; the rest are not used. One player starts by playing a domino. Players take turns playing a domino at one end of
the line of dominoes so that the touching side matches. Win by running out of dominoes or being the last to play.
Have your child count out amounts of money between 1 and 20 cents using pennies and dimes.
Sing the counting song Ten Little Monkeys with your child: "Ten little monkeys jumping on the bed. -- One fell off and broke his head. -Mama called the doctor and the doctor said, -- 'No more monkeys jumping on the bed!'" (Repeat until reaching zero). You could also sing
The Ants Go Marching , or One, Two, Buckle my Shoe .
Go on a scavenger hunt with your child for two-dimensional shapes that are part of three-dimensional shapes (Examples: The top of a cylindershaped drinking glass is a circle, the top of a cone-shaped funnel is a circle, the top of a cube-shaped die/dice is a square).
Have your child count: How many minute marks are around the outside of a clock with hands?
How Can I Include Math In My Child's Summer?
Activity
Suggested summer math activities for students entering 1st grade
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Play Simon Says with your child using position words. ("Simon says put your hands above your head," "Simon says put your hands on your
knees," etc.)
Practice flash cards with your child for addition and subtraction with numbers that are 5 or less (if you don't have a set, make them together
first).
Have your child work on counting, starting with any number between 1 and 100 by playing hide and seek or a similar game.
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Have your child use toothpicks or straws to represent numbers from 1-20, bundling groups of 10 together.
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Have your child roll one die/dice and say how many dots are showing without counting. Repeat this 20 times.
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Play a game with your child on a game board or your own home-made board: roll one die/dice and move forward counting up to the number of
spaces shown, unless you roll a six in which case you move back six (or play Chutes and Ladders or Snakes and Ladders).
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Ask your child: which objects in our home our heavy? Which are light? (paper, pillow, small book, large book, toy, etc.).
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Look at license plates with your child and compare the digits (Example: What is the largest digit on the red truck's license plate?).
Have a competition with your child to see who can identify the most shapes (triangles, rectangles, squares, circles, hexagons, cubes, cones,
cylinders, spheres, etc.).
Go on a cylinder scavenger hunt with your child (cups, water bottles, fire extinguisher, pencils, markers, crayons, toilet paper rolls, tin cans,
straws, etc.).
Have your child count the number of words on a page or pages in a favorite book.
Play Reverse the Number with your child. Write a number from 11 to 99 and have your child write and say the number with the digits
reversed. (Example: You write 15, and you child will reverse it, writing and saying 51.)
Have your child count out the utensils for dinner (Example: "Please get out 1 fork, 1 spoon, and 1 knife for all 6 of us, as well as 3 serving
spoons.").
Play the card game War with your child to compare pairs of numbers shown on two cards (Each player gets a card, the player with the highest
number wins all the cards for that round).
At the store, have your child pick out a number of items, then tell them to put some back. Ask them to tell you how many they now have by
adding and subtracting (not just counting) Example: "Pick out 7 apples. Hmmm… I think that will be too many. Put 2 back. How many do
we have now?".
Have your child write the numbers from 0 to 20.
Go on a rectangle scavenger hunt with your child (table, books, magazines, boxes of food, doors, windows, walls, TVs, flags, etc.).
Have your child compare the weights of several objects (Which of these two is heavier?, Which of all of these is the heaviest?, Which of these
two is lighter?, Which of all of these is the lightest?, Do any of the objects weigh the same amount?, etc.).
Have your child work on counting to 100 by tens while playing Hide and Seek or a similar game.
Have your child split small groups of objects (10 or fewer) into two piles in several ways (Example: 10 Cheerios can become a group of 3 and a
group of 7 or a group of 1 and a group of 9).
Have your child describe shapes they find as either two-dimensional (flat shapes: triangles, rectangles, squares, circles, and hexagons) or
three-dimensional (solid shapes: cubes, cones, cylinders, and spheres).
Work on counting backwards from 100 while playing Hide and Seek or a similar game with your child.
Have your child count the number of days on the calendar until an upcoming event or holiday, then make a paper countdown chain with one
link for each day until the event or holiday.
Ask your child to roll two dice and subtract the smaller number from the larger number without counting.
Put 10 small objects in a paper bag. Let your child grab a handful and estimate how many they have in their hand before removoving their
hand. Pull them out and count to check. Then say how many are left in the bag.
Play hopscotch with your child, counting the numbers as you jump.
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Have your child describe shapes that they find by counting the number of sides and number of corners and by determining if it has straight
lines or curved sides.
Play Reverse Pictionary with your child. The clue-giver describes what shapes to draw and where to position them while the guesser is the
one who does the drawing. (Example: Say, "Draw a circle, draw a smaller circle on top, draw a smaller circle on top of that." - a snowman.
Say, "Draw a square, then using the top of the square as one side, draw a triangle above the square." - a house. Possible words: face, person,
banana, sun, tree, ice cream, heart, light bulb, battery, car).
Have your child identify the shapes of road signs (rectangles, triangles, circles, squares).
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Have your child roll one die/dice or spin a spinner (that goes up to 10 or less), then say what number they must add to make ten.
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Have your child use toothpicks or straws and marshmallows, modeling clay, or sticky tack to build two- or three-dimensional shapes with
straight sides (triangles, rectangles, squares, hexagons, and cubes).
Have your child go on a circle scavenger hunt (plates, bowls, wheels, clock, the letter 'o', buttons, ring, eyes, etc.).
Play Go Fish for Ten with your child. Play go fish with a deck of cards (face cards removed) but instead of matching pairs look for pairs that
add to 10.
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